Study on jojoba oil hydrogenation

Trials were cattied out on jojoba oil hydrogenation to study the effects of the main operative variable on iodine index and melting point. . A batch reactor with nickel catalysts was used. The effects selected for analysis were the reaction temperature, the operation pressure and the amount of catalyst.The range of temperature studied was 120-200ºC, the pressure was between 2 and 4 atm and the amount of catalyst ranged from 0.2 – 0.6% (percentage of catalyst mass over oil mass). The results showed that these three factors affected the reaction significantly; although temperature was the most influential in the progression of the reaction. In addition, the kinetic behavior was studied using a potential model of pseudo-first order and the corresponding kinetic parameters were obtained.